A Few Plain Truths
by Laura Schiller
Summary: What exactly did Elizabeth Murray say to Lofty John after he played the 'poisoned apple' trick on Emily?


A Few Plain Truths

By Laura Schiller

Based on: L. M. Montgomery's Emily series

When Elizabeth Murray stormed (if a Murray could be said to storm) into 'Lofty' John Sullivan's carpentry workshop on the same night he had played his prank on her young niece, he was not exactly surprised. He sighed to himself as he laid down his tools and looked up, feeling rather like a little boy caught out by a schoolteacher. Except that she had always been like that, even as a young girl.

"Well now, Betsy," he said with false joviality, knowing quite well that the nickname got on her nerves. "And what is it ye do be wanting to spake about on this fine evening?"

He looked into her thin, austere, fine-boned face with its coronet of silver hair, which had once been blonde. Her blue eyes, normally so steady, sparkled with coldly suppressed rage.

"That is Miss Murray to you, _Mr. _Sullivan," she said. "I came to ask you what you mean by your outrageous conduct today. What rigmarole have you been spouting to my niece about a poisoned apple?"

For a moment, Lofty John couldn't help laughing at her indignant expression – not to mention the memory of Emily's horror-stricken face as she streaked out of the workshop, looking as if demons were after her. It had been an irresistible temptation – although certainly, he thought, very ill-advised.

"Oh, it was only in fun," he protested. "She's a nice little thing, your Emily is. I thought I'd give her a wee bit of a scare and we could laugh about it together, that's all – I had no notion she'd take it so seriously … "

Elizabeth took a step closer. Even the swish of her long gray skirt sounded ominous.

"You frightened the child half to death, you foolish, impertinent, thoughtless man!" she hissed. "You knew perfectly well how high-strung she is. Did you enjoy making her suffer because she is a Murray? Is this your petty attempt at revenge?"

John Sullivan felt his back stiffen and his face freeze over. He was _not_ going to have her dig up the past.

"I dinna know to what ye are referring, _Miss Murray_," he said, just as frostily polite as she could be.

Elizabeth waved her thin hand through the air.

"Oh, indeed? Just who was it who placed a Big Sweet apple – from the Sullivan orchards – onto my desk when we turned fifteen, with my initials inside a heart? Quite the sentimental gesture, as I recall. Like something out of a trashy novel."

John's soul flinched back, as if she had cut him with a whip. He recalled it as if it were yesterday – how the lovely, haughty girl had picked up the apple in two fingers by the stem, dropped it in the ash-pile outside, wiped her hands on her dress and sniffed, to the accompaniment of wild giggles from her peers. Laura had given him a sympathetic look; his chums had ragged him about it for days. They had even written the names John and Elizabeth up as a 'take-notice', and you could not have said which of them was the most furious.

"That will be neither here nor there," he shot back. "We are adults, Miss Murray, grown beyond a childish quarrel – at least one of us is."

Elizabeth gave him a very eloquent look, leaving it in no doubt which of them she thought was _not_ the adult. He noticed the wrinkles around those blue eyes of hers, worn down by decades of stern frowns and far too little smiling. Her smile had been very sweet, once upon a time, spreading out across her face like ripples in the water. The Murray smile.

"I know you, Lofty John Sullivan," she said, still looking him over with infinite scorn. "You are nothing but a low-life desperate for attention, and so you chose this heartless prank on my niece as a way of getting it. Well, here it is – Emily is completely unstrung and will need days to get over her fright. Laura will be sitting up with her half the night. Even Jimmy is disturbed. As for me, I have never despised you more than I do now."

Lofty John had been holding back his temper all the while; it exploded like a keg of bottled flour.

"You Murrays!" he snapped. "You think you're just the owl's whiskers, don't you now? The Chosen People – ha! You make me laugh." He snapped his fingers in her face, making her flinch back involuntarily. "Strutting about like you own the whole province, for the sake of a moldy old graveyard and a roll of dead names."

Elizabeth sniffed in just the same way she had when she had disposed of his Big Sweet apple.

"So do the Sullivans," was all she said. "And you haven't _any_ earthly reason. Good evening, Mr. Sullivan."

She swept out of his workshop, not even slamming the door – a Murray from the top of her head to the tips of her buttoned boots.

Lofty John snarled a curse and slammed his fist into the wall, grimacing at the pain.

"I'll be even with you yet," he muttered, " … _Betsy_."

As she walked home to New Moon, not even caring that the dark velvet air of a summer night was all around her, Elizabeth reflected bitterly on the months leading to that August morning of so long ago. Lofty John had been everywhere – tugging her braid, calling her Betsy (nobody else had dared to nickname her, not in all her fifty-seven years!), trying to charm her with his twinkling eyes and that all-too-adorable Irish brogue. All just to see if the stuck-up, homely, oldest Murray girl would lose her heart to him. She had overheard her female classmates say as much. Moreover, that flamboyant gesture with the apple had embarrassed her in front of the whole school.

The Murray pride could not bear it. The Murray pride had made her toss John's gift disdainfully onto the ash-pile, when all she had really wanted was to eat it, slowly, savoring that unique sweetness on her tongue. Nobody grew apples like the Sullivans.

How she hated that – that … (Only one of Jimmy's expressions would do here, though she would die before saying it out loud.)

That dod-gasted Lofty John!


End file.
